Draft Architecture Block Diagram

BoxLambda is a project creating a retro-style FPGA-based microcomputer from open-source components. The microcomputer serves as a platform for software and RTL experimentation.

BoxLambda is a software-hardware cross-over project. The plan is to provide room for experimentation both on the FPGA RTL side and on the software side.

Key Goals

  • Create a sandbox for experimenting with software and (FPGA) HW.
    • Simplicity: It should be easy to jump in and do something: create, hack, tinker.
      • It should be doable for a single person to develop a good understanding of the entire system, software and hardware.
      • Deterministic Behavior: By design, it should be clear how long an operation, be it an instruction or a DMA transfer, is going to take.
      • Single User/Single Tasking OS booting to a console shell.
    • Create a Modular Architecture allowing for a mix-and-match of software and hardware components.
      • Support for partial FPGA reconfiguration.
  • Target Hardware is Digilent’s Arty-A7.
  • The computer should support the following peripherals:
    • Keyboard
    • Mouse (optional)
    • Joystick (optional)
    • Serial port
    • SD card storage
    • VGA Display
    • Audio output
  • Sound and graphics should be sufficient to support retro-style 2D gameplay.

You can find the source code for BoxLambda on GitHub: https://github.com/epsilon537/boxlambda/.